On June 19th, British consulting company Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) published its World University Rankings 2020, which included the top universities from around the world. South Ural State University preserved its standing in this ranking (place 801-1000) and improved its results in several important indicators, what proves that the university is developing according to plan and is becoming more competitive.
QS World University Rankings is one of the most authoritative university rankings, in compiling of which the specialists perform an all-round assessment of the work of higher education institutions. QS has been publishing its ranking of the world’s best universities since 2004, and assesses educational institutions as per six criteria. These include: academic reputation (40% of the total score), the students-to-faculty ratio (20%), citation index (20%), reputation among employers (10%), share of international students (5%), and share of foreign professors (5%).
“We keep improving our activity on developing SUSU as an international university. We have preserved our standing in the global ranking of the world’s best universities, which has been published today by the British company QS, and this means that we are working efficiently and taking into account the trends and rules set forth by the experts in this field. Our current task is to get listed in the discipline-related rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds and Times Higher Education and improve our standing,” notes SUSU Rector Aleksandr Shestakov.
This year, many universities have lost a few points in their standings or even dropped out of the OS WUR ranking due to the growing global competition. SUSU is still listed among the 1,000 best universities of the world, it keeps developing and sets new goals, stresses Vice-Rector for International Relations Olga Yaroshenko.
“SUSU has preserved its standing in the QS World University Rankings 2020, and we consider it as our university’s accomplishment since about 50 universities dropped out of the ranking because new competitive universities have been listed in it this year; and all of that proves that SUSU is stable in its development. It’s an important moment also due to the fact that we are beginning our Admissions Campaign already on June 20th, and this information could serve as a signal for the enrolees that they could be studying in one of the 1000 of the world’s best universities. We should also mention that in the newly published QS World University Rankings, South Ural State University has improved its results in several indicators at once.”
SUSU has improved its standing in such blocks as academic reputation, number of international students, and the SUSU student-to-faculty ratio, what can be explained by the targeted work in these fields.
New approaches to working with academic contacts, which were first implemented by the university in 2018, resulted in the reinforcement of the university’s standing in the “academic reputation” block. For instance, the current ranking methodology implies the submission of 800 contacts to the ranking agency: 400 academic contacts and 400 contacts of employers. The improvement, first and foremost, related to the quality of the contacts being submitted to QS: the priority was given to those contacts, with whom the interaction is performed on a regular basis.
In addition, thanks to the efforts on attracting international students, the SUSU’s standing as per the relevant indicator has improved by 7 points. The improvement in the internationalization indicators has become possible thanks to the extended list of the countries, from which students are coming to enrol in SUSU. In 2018, the first students from such countries as Argentina, Cuba, Italy and Rwanda came to study at our university. An important role in expanding the geography is played by the constant increase of the number of basic academic programmes being taught in English: in the new academic year 18 such programmes will be offered already.
Also, the SUSU’s strong aspect is the ration between the number of students and the number of academic staff. As per this indicator, our university takes the 386th place in the world.
We should note that over the recent years, SUSU has significantly improved its standing in many rankings. You can read more about the standing of the major university in South Ural region and one of the leading universities in Russia in the international scientific-and-education space here.